EA's chief operations officer chap, Peter Moore, has revealed an October 1 start date for Battlefield 4's open beta run. It'll feature "Conquest mode on the Siege of Shanghai map" according to a note on the BF4 beta page , which means we get to fly helicopters into that shiny central skyscraper until it flops into the sea.

There's also a mysterious and yet-to-be-detailed "exclusive" beta for those who pre-ordered the Battlefield 4 deluxe edition, or bought Battlefield 3 Premium, or, in extremely dedicated cases, bought and endured last year's Medal of Honor Warfighter Limited Edition. To the latter, I feel you pain, but hold fast. Your reward is almost here.

Th Battlefield 4 will give us hands on with DICE's updated Frostbite engine, but will we get to sink through the floor and fall into a milky dimension of total nothingness like we did in the buggy Battlefield 3 beta? Will snipers once more find a way to squirm inside rocks and dominate the map from unassailable positions? Ah, betas. I can't stop myself from playing them, but sometimes it's like being a rat in a broken maze where the walls don't quite work and other rats keep trying to kill you with overpowered heavy weaponry.

In spite of the shoddiness and creaking, overloaded servers, there's fun to be had, and it'll be nice to see how much destructibility there is in these big new maps. Battlefield 4 is properly out on October 29, and will contain beaching ships, thunderstorms, tank-stopping war-bollards and lots and lots of birds. You'll see a few of these things in the video below.